Again, yup, though this time it's not from Latin. Rather, both the Latin and the Irish are from a common Indo-European root.

Curiously, the Irish and Latin works for "left hand" are unrelated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Isilder

"dilis" faithful, cognate diligent ?

Diligent is cognate, but distantly. Dílis doesn't suggest faithful in the sense of dutiful, assiduous, which is what diligent suggests to me. Rather it suggests faithful in the sense of loving, rejoicing in, taking constant delight in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Isilder

hanam . heart ? Or man ?

Neither. Cognate with Latin animus, soul or spirit.

Dé and anam probably come straight from Latin, and arrive with Christianity. Dílis and deis are older.

Diligent is cognate, but distantly. Dílis doesn't suggest faithful in the sense of dutiful, assiduous, which is what diligent suggests to me. Rather it suggests faithful in the sense of loving, rejoicing in, taking constant delight in

What surprises me is that the Irish words for "man" and "woman" are very obviously related to the Latin ones. They're not particularly similar to the Germanic roots, which argues against it being a general Indo-European thing... but on the other hand, "man" and "woman" are quite fundamental concepts, not the sort of thing you'd expect to be loanwords.

What surprises me is that the Irish words for "man" and "woman" are very obviously related to the Latin ones. They're not particularly similar to the Germanic roots, which argues against it being a general Indo-European thing... but on the other hand, "man" and "woman" are quite fundamental concepts, not the sort of thing you'd expect to be loanwords.

fear (OI fer, gen. fir) is cognate with vir, yes; what are the "woman" words you are calling obvious? Bean (OI ben) is cognate with Greek γυνή (as in gyno- / gyne-) but I'm not aware of a Latin cognate.

What surprises me is that the Irish words for "man" and "woman" are very obviously related to the Latin ones. They're not particularly similar to the Germanic roots, which argues against it being a general Indo-European thing... but on the other hand, "man" and "woman" are quite fundamental concepts, not the sort of thing you'd expect to be loanwords.

Irish fear is cognate with Germanic wer as in werewolf and wereld (world). Irish bean is cognate with Germanic queen.

Right. "Man" is the odd one, where English lost the word for "male person" and replaced it with the word for "person". Old English wer meant a male, so you have werwolf, man-wolf, or wergild, man-price. So we have wo-man meaning a female person, but we lost wer-man, meaning a male person, instead we have man, originally meaning a person but now only meaning a male person.

I'm certain I remember some Irish word that looked a lot like "mulier" (one of the Latin words for "woman"), but without actually knowing Irish, it's tough to track down what it was. The context was a pair of signs on restroom doors.

I'm certain I remember some Irish word that looked a lot like "mulier" (one of the Latin words for "woman"), but without actually knowing Irish, it's tough to track down what it was. The context was a pair of signs on restroom doors.

Usually fir (men) and mná (women), but you may have seen some other combination.

Usually fir (men) and mná (women), but you may have seen some other combination.

Among the many stories that Peter Ustinov used to tell on chat shows was one about his confusion when faced with toilet doors labelled fir and mná. He could read many languages, but Irish was not one of them. Eventually he calculated that thw word beginning with 'f' was likely to be in some way related to femina, and the word beginning with 'm' to masculinus, and he made his choice accordingly. He got it wrong, of course.

You can't type a little dot into google translate. So raibh, which can be spelled raiḃ, is misread by the translator-machine as ráib, which is "rape," the plant that gives you canola oil.

It's a database problem, not a typing problem. Copy-pasting the version with the dot, it is read as if it didn't have the dot - compare with copy-pasting ano and año and telling it the original language is Spanish. In this second example, someone has actually bothered indicate the two separate translations... but the definitions under the window are given for both words and spelled with an n

The translation I get into Spanish is violación... rape as in violation and not -seed, ayup.

It's a database problem, not a typing problem. Copy-pasting the version with the dot, it is read as if it didn't have the dot - compare with copy-pasting ano and año and telling it the original language is Spanish. In this second example, someone has actually bothered indicate the two separate translations... but the definitions under the window are given for both words and spelled with an n

The translation I get into Spanish is violación... rape as in violation and not -seed, ayup.

Well, not exactly, because the dot-version is (essentially) an older orthography. For a database to code both versions, it would have to enter the entire dictionary twice, just in case someone uses the old-fashioned h-free system. And there are a lot of words that are one thing with the dots, but map onto another without, as in the raibh / ráib example (especially if you ignore the fada / acute accent).

By the way, if you can't make oil from rape, what was the original rape plant used for?

By the way, if you can't make oil from rape, what was the original rape plant used for?

You can make oil from the non-canola varieties of rape, it's just not very palatable due to the glucosinolate, and not very safe to eat due to the erucic acid. According to wikipedia, it's mainly used for machinery lubrication.

Getting a bit off topic, but canola oil comes from the canola plant, which is a specially bred variant from natural rapeseed.

The canola plant has a significantly lower erucic acid concentration which makes it safe to use for human consumption. Because of this difference, it has a distinct name from natural rapeseed.

I don't think this is a consistent usage outside the US and Canada. The culinary product is often referred to as, and sometimes sold as, "rapeseed oil" in other countries. Here's a Guardian article and a BBC article, both referring to it as rapeseed oil.

I don't think this is a consistent usage outside the US and Canada. The culinary product is often referred to as, and sometimes sold as, "rapeseed oil" in other countries. Here's a Guardian article and a BBC article, both referring to it as rapeseed oil.

And my cousins, who are canola farmers in Saskatchewan, always used to refer to their crop as rape (1980s, when we were last on speaking terms...).

Well, not exactly, because the dot-version is (essentially) an older orthography. For a database to code both versions, it would have to enter the entire dictionary twice, just in case someone uses the old-fashioned h-free system. And there are a lot of words that are one thing with the dots, but map onto another without, as in the raibh / ráib example (especially if you ignore the fada / acute accent).

In the case of a general spelling change, it could also be possible to create a rule ("if someone enters ḃ, make it bh"), but doing that actually takes more work and computer power than having both spellings in the list.

What surprises me is that the Irish words for "man" and "woman" are very obviously related to the Latin ones. They're not particularly similar to the Germanic roots, which argues against it being a general Indo-European thing... but on the other hand, "man" and "woman" are quite fundamental concepts, not the sort of thing you'd expect to be loanwords.

Italo-Celtic is a thing.
Dé / Deus
deis / dexter (compare Sanskrit dakshina: right hand, south)
dilig / delecto, delicia (delight)
Ever notice how cara means the same thing in Gaelic and Latin? Once my next door neighbor was a woman from Scotland named Cara. My first thought was how'd she get an Italian name? Second thought: oh, right: anam cara. Pure Italo-Celtic.
What is it with the 6/8 meter shared by Irish jig and Italian tarantella, anyway?

Funny how mná is an anagram of man, but it's just one of those coincidences. Mná is the plural of bean*
*pronounced "ban" but with a slender b. Although /b/ and /p/ in Irish seem to me to be the letters least affected by slenderization, so would it make less difference in this instance?

Bean is from Proto-Indo-European *gwen- 'woman' which is also the source of Greek gyne, Persian zan as in "zenana", Swedish kvinna, English queen.

English speakers* seem determined to project their lack of diacritics onto other languages.

*not you: this error is extremely widespread, and this phrase is almost always written cara in English contexts, rather than ċara or chara.

Thanks for the correction! The way to spot those when unmarked would be to learn all the lenition rules, which I haven't yet done. On behalf of many languages, I share your feelings about the erasure of diacritics.

Just because two languages are in the same language family does not mean that one can make a "word for word" translation between the two languages.

Especially between languages with significantly different grammar and structure like English and Irish.

The English sentence:

"The girl is walking"

Word for word the same concept translated from Irish:

"Is the girl at walking"

In Irish the word order is Verb-Subject-Object as opposed to English which is Subject-Verb-Object. As just one example. Unlike English, you don't invert the verb and subject order to ask a question. Also, while English will change the ending of words Irish often changes the beginning of words. Another outstanding oddity: Irish has neither "yes" nor "no" as discreet words. If someone asks you "are you doing something?" you have to answer either "I am" or "I am not", you can't just say yes or no because neither of those words exist in Irish (though Irish speakers might borrow them a lot these days - they might wind up as language immigrants).

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Which is why word-for-word translations are often confusing, nonsensical, or useless.

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